


Orca Play

by BrandyDW



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 14:01:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10466691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrandyDW/pseuds/BrandyDW
Summary: Just an idea I had, and wanted to get out of my system.





	

They didn't think that this was the most ethical thing to do. It had never been done before, with any animal other than humans, and humans always had the ability to consent. However, it could potentially save a species. The southern resident orca population near the coast of Oregon has been on the endangered species list since 2005 and their numbers are not climbing. If scientifically they could take the egg out of one orca female and the sperm from one orca male and transplant it successfully into another orca female, they could potentially do that with wild orca's and help to save the dwindling population. The ethical and moral issues would still exist, but it would be for the greater good, right? 

That is how they got to their current predicament. They were able to extract an egg from Orkid, and determined it was viable, the only reason why she had never been able to get pregnant before, their current hypothesis was that she has a hostile uterus or her body just reabsorbs the fetus because of how active she is. They took sperm from Nakai and joined the two together in a petri dish. Then they implanted the fertilized egg into Kohana in Loro Parque both because SeaWorld said they would stop breeding orca's and because Kohana had rejected both of her previous calves. In this case they wanted the mother to reject the calf so that the calf could go back to SeaWorld San Diego to be with Orkid and Nakai. Orkid and Corky both have a history of taking in young orca's sent to SeaWorld San Diego like orphans such as Splash and Sumar. So they hoped that the calf would be able to return to it's biological mother but be reared by the staff as well as it would still need milk during it's first year of life at least.

The other reason why they used Orkid's egg versus another orca females, is because of how bright Orkid is, she's one of the smartest orca's in captivity and has earned herself the nickname of Rocket Scientist because of her knowing over 300 behaviors, and easily being able to put different hand signals together to perform new behaviors. They hoped that somehow her intelligence would be passed onto her offspring. With Nakai being the father, it would be his first calf as well and then the calf would also being Kasatka's grand calf. There would be no inbreeding in the pairing.

Seventeen and a half months later, and Kohana gave birth to a healthy baby, and once again she had rejected it. The staff at Loro Parque hand reared her, they quickly found out she was a female, for the first two months of her life, before sending her by plane to SeaWorld San Diego. The SeaWorld staff quickly decided that her name would be Orkaia, as a tribute to her biological parents. Since orca's can't actually understand verbal names from humans, it wouldn't confuse the calf at all. 

Things settled in fairly nicely after that, Orkid, Corky, and Kasatka's whole family quickly grew accustomed to Orkaia and she could frequently be seen with any of them learning and playing. Each day trainers Petey, Robbin or Lindy would feed her and do normal routines with her to get her more used to husbandry practices. So far things seemed to be settling in well. 

The public however was not happy, the anti-captivity groups were protesting daily and there were several articles in different papers asking about the ethical conundrum they were now in. Scientific papers however were seeing it in the same context that SeaWorld originally saw it. That it could potentially save wild orca's. Who was right? Was it okay to play God with these mammals?


End file.
